LITMIR.BIZ

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stopped her with a shake of his head. He said, “We have an agreement with Sange that no one wears crucifixes in the mansion. If you put the ring on that chain, she will be highly insulted. We can’t afford to alienate her.”

      The rose quartz necklace Sauvage had made for her also hung from Izzy’s neck. She pointedly reclasped her crucifix—continuing to wear it—and unfastened the string of pale pink quartz. Then she slipped the ring onto the beaded necklace and reconnected the clasp.

      A sudden burst of warmth pressed against the satin of her gown. She looked down to see a white nimbus of magical energy emanating from the ring.

      Michel de Bouvard sank on one knee, lowering his head as he whispered, “Ma guardienne. ”

      “I’m not the guardienne yet,” Izzy protested, as the light faded.

      “You’re the closest thing we have,” he replied. His voice was softer, more deferential.

      “Now we should go to the private meeting room upstairs,” he continued, rising. “I’ll let the governor and the others know you’re ready to meet with them. Jean-Marc and Alain both have assistants, of course. You should talk to them, as well. They’re very upset.”

      “No.” She crossed her arms and stood rooted to the spot. “Tell everyone to come down here,” she said. “I’m not leaving my mother and the regent alone.” Marianne lay in her bed of state in the chamber beyond the OR.

      Michel blinked, obviously taken aback.

      “Devereaux and your mother are not alone.”

      “Without me, they may as well be,” she retorted.

      “Madame, these are healers,” he reminded her as he opened wide his arm, taking in the other people in the OR. “They honor the code of ethics of healers everywhere—First Do No harm.”

      Harm was open to interpretation. One of those healers might decide that allowing Jean-Marc to live would harm the House of the Flames. Or that snuffing out Marianne’s life once and for all might help it.

      Izzy clasped the ring dangling from the necklace, its warmth seeping into her bones. She narrowed her eyes a fraction and said, “They’ll come down here or there will be no meeting.”

      She caught his answering grimace and handily ignored it. Back in New York, in the Two-Seven’s prop cage, she had blown off the wheedling and blustering of career police officers and detectives who wanted her to bend the rules in order to make their lives easier. No amount of pressure had ever succeeded in getting Izzy to violate procedure.

      Here and now she had no set of protocols for what was happening. She couldn’t play it by the book, because there was no book. But she could stand up to Michel de Bouvard and make her decisions stick.

      “They come to me,” she said again.

      “We’re in a precarious position,” he reminded her. “Now that Le Fils has dared to attack us, the Ungifted will consider us too weak to protect them against the supernaturals in this region.”

      Maybe they are too weak, Izzy thought, then corrected herself: Maybe we are too weak.

      “You need to be seen,” he continued. “I agreed that we would keep the regent’s condition a secret on a need-to-know basis, but you don’t have the luxury of seclusion. The people have got to know that you’re all right.”

      “Then bring a contingent down here to meet with me,” she reiterated. “Would my mother jump if the governor told her to?”

      “I have no idea,” he replied harshly. “Your mother’s been in a coma for twenty-six years.”

      “You’re out of line,” Izzy said.

      “I’m not!” he shouted. Heads turned. More quietly he said, “I’m not. We’re in an emergency situation. Our chain of command puts me in charge after Jean-Marc. But you’re here now, and I’m trying to steer you to the best course of action.”

      Her lips parted, but she let him continue. He needed to get this off his chest, and she needed to know where he stood.

      “Let’s not mince words,” he said. “I honor your status. I truly do. I’m loyal to you. But you just got here, and you don’t know anything, and we’re practically at war, and not just with Le Fils. I don’t how to explain to you just how tenuous our association with the Ungifted is right now.”

      “Got it,” she said.

      “So you need to reassure them. Or they’ll abandon their treaty with us.”

      “Will they do that today?” she asked him. “Abandon the treaty?”

      He shifted his weight as if he didn’t want to answer. “Doubtful,” he admitted. “But with each hour that passes without a meeting, it’ll take that much more handholding to reassure them that we’re still in the game.”

      “I’m more than willing to meet them,” she said. “But they have to come down here.”

      “All right,” Michel said. “I’ll see what I can do.”

      As he turned to go, a deep bass gong thrummed through the air. Izzy felt its vibration in the bones of her bare feet.

      Sequestered in her corner, Sauvage threw her arms around Ruthven and cried, “We’re being attacked again!”

      Michel closed his eyes, opened them again. He said, “Field agents. And the executive staff. I think they’ve found something.”

      “I’ll go with you to the door,” Izzy told him.

      She crossed to her chair and picked up her shoes, stepping into them. The clack of her heels provided a counterpoint to the silent tension in the room.

      They went out of the OR and into the monitoring room, where the techs watched the readouts of her mother’s life-support machines. Then they went out of that room to the main chamber. The room was dominated by her mother’s elaborate gilt bed. Izzy gazed tenderly at her as they passed. She looked like Izzy—an oval face with freckles across the nose, framed with long, black ringlets. In fact, she looked younger. She had only been twenty when she’d fallen into the coma; Jean-Marc had told Izzy that Gifted aged more slowly than Ungifted. He had assumed that now that her powers had awakened, her own aging process would decelerate, and maybe even reverse.

      They walked down the center aisle of the chamber. The Femmes Blanches sat in two rows on either side, hands joined, holding Marianne’s hands.

      Michael opened the chamber door.

      A man and a woman in black suits and headsets stood on the other side. The male security agent cradled a two-foot-by-two-foot matte gray container with silver fittings against his chest.

      Three other people stood in the hallway, well away from the agents. One was a young, dark-haired woman in a sleek business suit adorned with a flames pin identical to the one Michel wore on his lapel. Two men, one in his midtwenties and one middle-aged, also wore suits and pins.

      When they saw Izzy, they bowed. She inclined her head.

      “Oui? ” Michel queried. “Did you find something?”

      “Oui, ” the female agent replied, her eyes bright with excitement. She gestured to the container. “We have some readable fragments of the bokor himself.”

      “Of Esposito?” Michel asked, his voice rising with excitement.

      “Oui, ” she replied proudly. The man holding the container smiled.

      “Wonderful work,” Michel said.

      Izzy parsed the conversation. “Fragments? Are we talking residue?”

      “Oui, madame, ” Michel affirmed, smiling. “Robert and Louise are two of our best. If they say they’re readable, that means we can get some useful information off them.”

      “Readable,”

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